science books
jdupuis | August 18, 2011The New York Review of Books has a great group review of some recentish books on everyone's favourite Internet behemoth: Google.
And they all look pretty interesting! (And I may have featured a couple of these before.)
In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy (ISBN-13: 978-1416596585)
In barely a decade Google has made itself a global brand bigger than Coca-Cola or GE; it has created more wealth faster than any company in history; it dominates the information economy. How did that happen? It happened more or less in plain sight. Google has many secrets but…
jdupuis | August 17, 2011I'll be speaking at the upcoming Science Online NYC event on September 20th.
Enhanced eBooks & BookApps: the Promise and Perils
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM (ET)
New York, NY
Weiss 305
Rockefeller University
E66th and York Ave.
New York, NY
Enhanced ebooks and tablet apps clearly offer new ways to present material and engage readers. Yet some of the software restrictions and rights deals that these ebooks, apps and their platforms use can make them unfriendly to librarians, archivists, and future users. How can authors, designers, and publishers best exploit these…
jdupuis | August 16, 2011I just got an email from the administers of this award:
$10,000 Lane Anderson Award Shortlist Announced
Celebrating the Best Science Writing in Canada
The six finalists competing for the 2010 Lane Anderson Award were announced today by Hollister Doll and Sharon Fitzhenry, Directors of the Fitzhenry Family Foundation.
The annual Lane Anderson Award honours two jury-selected books, in the categories of adult and young reader, published in the field of science, and written by a Canadian. The winner in each category will receive $10,000. Winners will be announced on 14th September.
"We want to…
jdupuis | June 19, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Follies of Science: 20th Century Visions of Our Fantastic Future, is from April 26, 2007.
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I don't have to much to say of a deep or profound nature to say about this book. It's one of those "Whatever…
jdupuis | June 6, 2011Sometimes we Open Access advocates tend to assume everybody is already on our side. You know, all our librarian and scientist colleagues out there. Surely by now they've seen the light. They understand the main issues and flavours of OA, can ably summarize the major arguments for OA and refute the major complaints against.
Of course, reality is a lot more complicated than my dreamy, unrealistic wishes.
Convincing librarians to support Open Access, either directly or indirectly, is usually fairly easy but even we have a number of misconceptions and misunderstandings about what OA really…
jdupuis | June 5, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, is from August 14, 2007. (Weinberger left a detailed comment at the original post, for those that are interested.)
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David Weinberger's…
jdupuis | May 22, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Sharing, Privacy and Trust in a Networked World, is from November 19, 2011.
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OCLC's newest state of the library world/environmental scan report was published a few months ago: Sharing, Privacy and Trust in a…
jdupuis | May 15, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts, is from February 24, 2008.
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This is one of those books that I picked up at a the train station cheap remaindered books kiosk. I do…
jdupuis | May 8, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, is from February 24, 2008.
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Just so you all know I don't just read the brightest, shiniest, newest books. I also read some old classics too. And classic…
jdupuis | May 2, 2011A while back I posted some semi-coherent ramblings inspired by the HarperCollins/Overdrive mess concerning how libraries were able to license ebook collections for their patrons.
I'm not sure my ideas have changed or solidified or evolved or what, but I've certainly come to a slightly different way of articulating them.
Here goes.
At a certain level, libraries -- public, academic, institutional, special, whatever -- lending ebooks makes no sense at all.
If a library acquires a digital copy of a book there is no good reason why every person in that library's community (school, town, city,…
jdupuis | May 1, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology, is from February 26, 2008.
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I try and spread around the disciplinary love in my science book reading. Some physics, some math,…
jdupuis | April 24, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages, is from March 25, 2008.
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This book should have been called Everything is not Miscellaneous. In fact, this book could be imagined as Weinberger's Everything is…
jdupuis | April 17, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Einstein: His Life and Universe, is from March 24, 2008.
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Walter Issacson's 2007 biography of Albert Einstein was one of the best reviewed books of that year, appearing on nearly all the year end lists of…
jdupuis | April 10, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way To Be Smart, is from April 12, 2008.
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You know how I'm always complaining about business-y buzz/hype books & articles? How they're 1/3 repetition,…
jdupuis | April 3, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become, is from May 2, 2008.
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Ambient findability describes a fast emerging world where we can find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime. We're not…
jdupuis | March 28, 2011I read these five books over about the last year or so and they all represent something I really look for in books on complex subjects -- for the most part, they concentrate on things individual people can actually do to make a difference. In this case, a difference in the future of the planet.
Whether it's where you live, what you eat, what you buy or how you get around, the choice is ours. Each of us, me and you, can make choices that, in the aggregate, can make a difference.
Mark Bittman's Food Matters and Betty Fussell's Raising Steaks are at least as much about food and food culture…
jdupuis | March 27, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, is from May 18, 2008.
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It seems that at least half the time I mention this book to someone interested in the way the web is changing social patterns the…
jdupuis | March 21, 2011In his incredibly wonderful new book, On the Grid: A Plot of Land, An Average Neighborhood, and the Systems that Make Our World Work, Scott Huler gives us three essential take-aways:
Thank God for engineers
Get out your wallet
Let's learn to love our infrastructure. (p. 217-225)
In fact, not much more need really be said about the book. In essence it's a kind of tribute and salute to the women and men who keep our highly technoligized society functioning. The people we often forget about, whose glamour pales in comparison to movie stars, singers, politicians, even police and fire…
jdupuis | March 20, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, is from June 22, 2008.
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This is a book with a profoundly split personality. It's like two books warring in the bosom of one volume. It's a bit…
jdupuis | March 17, 2011For my own purposes I've been collecting various ebook-related posts for a while now and in particular the whole HarperCollins/library/ebook/Overdrive thing is a valuable source of lots of speculation and information. What I have below no doubt only represents a fairly small percentage of the total number of posts and articles about the issue.
My attention over the last few weeks has been a bit inconsistent too say the least so I'm sure I've missed a bunch of important posts. Please let me know in the comments about ones I should include. And I encourage people not to be modest and to let…